The Blog

It’s the holiday season – a time when you are thinking about…relationships!(?)

At the holidays your children are home for two solid weeks (and if you don’t have children, your friends with kids need you more than ever), you’re planning (or avoiding) time with your family, and you’re cherishing (or not) those who are closest to you.

At work, performance reviews may be coming in January which makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy with anticipation.

As a special treat for you, the December theme at Boyd-Smith Coaching is the Principle of Escalating Positivity. Each week, I’ll share tips and strategies for not only surviving the holidays (including your relationships) but actually thriving and maybe even enjoying yourself and your people!

Even our happiest, best relationships can slip into negative patterns or moments when a shot of positivity would have gone down better than what we actually said (I don’t know anything about that. I just read about it).

This week’s contribution to the Principle of Escalating Positivity is...

Appreciation.

It’s so simple. So obvious. And yet we don’t do it enough.

Here’s what you do:

1. Choose one of your close relationships.

2. Vow that you will appreciate that person 3 times a day. Just fill in these sentences:

“Thank you for…”

“I appreciated it when you…”

“I am grateful that you…”

3. Actually appreciate them (out loud) 3 times a day.

4. Up the ante on yourself by adding more people to the list of appreciation recipients. Try your boss, your annoying sister, the driver who just cut you off, or the cashier who is taking forever to ring up your groceries.